In the soil of Almere, a wooden fish trap construction of about 4500 years old has been discovered. It is the largest New Stone Age fishing weather ever found in Europe. The inhabitants of that time had a permanent residence and were already working according to a plan, thinks Willem-Jan Hogestijn, city archaeologist of Almere.
"Oh, and we also saw a wooden post," said the employee of the archaeological research bureau Archol casually. It was spring 2013, and the company had carried out several excavations at the De Stichtse Kant business park near Almere. This site on the A27 was soon to be built, and it was known that Stone Age flint tools were buried in the ground.
But a wooden pole? Remarkable, thought Willem-Jan Hogestijn, the city archaeologist of Almere, and he asked if they could search a little further. That turned out to be an excellent idea. More than 3,500 piles have now been excavated in the area, which were part of a major 'fishing weather' in the Neolithic (the New Stone Age). Dating with the carbon method indicated that the wood was felled around 4400 years ago.
Fish trap construction
A fishing wall is a structure that directs fish in a certain direction, usually with a trap at the end of the route. There used to be mats between the posts, woven from, for example, tree branches or willow. Remains of these have also been found in Almere.
The poles of Almere form the largest Stone Age fishing weather found in Europe so far, Hogestijn thinks. The construction already extends over 190 meters, and a beginning or end has not yet been determined. It is expected that a large part of the structure will remain undiscovered underground.
Fish defenses have been discovered several times that researchers suspect were of similar size at the time — in Denmark, for example — but those claims are based on reconstructions for which there is insufficient evidence. However, older fish defenses are known. In 1996, for example, three fish defenses were discovered at the Hoge Vaart in Almere that are more than 6000 years old, with a length of about ten metres.
Forest management
The wood of the Almere fishing industry is well preserved in the bottom of the polder. “It looked like it came straight from the Gamma,” says Hogestijn. That made further research possible. Most of the poles are made of birch wood, concluded archaeologists from the Biax research agency for archaeo- and paleobotany. Research on the growth rings showed that almost all the wood was cut around the end of the summer.
Hogestijn:“That is the only period in which you know that birch wood will grow back afterwards. The people here were apparently already looking ahead 4500 years ago.” That could indicate some form of forest management, he thinks. “But not everyone agrees with me!”
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Poles cut in other seasons occur sporadically, sometimes in small clusters. That could indicate maintenance and repair work, Hogestijn thinks. The builders of the fishing weather must have lived in the same place for at least a few years.
Stock
After the discovery of the fishing weather, more and more details came to light. The Stone Age residents of Almere also seem to have built a series of 'fish cages':triangular wooden pens, which were clearly not intended for catching fish, but for keeping them alive. But what was the stock for?
“The fishing weather must have been much too great for the daily supply of fish in the lake that was located here at the time,” says Hogestijn. He suspects that the Stone Age people in Almere focused on peak supply:a seasonal influx of salmon, for example, which migrated annually to their native waters to mate. “Then a storage space is of course useful.”
Indians
But there are also other possibilities that appeal more to the imagination. For example, the Heiltsuk, an Indian tribe in Western Canada, is traditionally known to smoke and preserve salmon. The fish was not allowed to be too fat for this, because that makes it less durable and quickly rancid. Hogestijn does not rule out the possibility that the Stone Age people of Almere also smoked and dried their fish, and used the storage to put the fish on a diet for a while before use.
He also considers it possible that part of the catch was given away as an investment in social relations. Generosity is usually highly valued by primitive peoples, and it is conceivable that this was also the case with Stone Age man. Perhaps the residents therefore gave the surplus of fish as gifts to people who lived a little further away, in order to win them over. “Life was hard”, Hogestijn emphasizes, “you never knew when you needed someone else.”
Fish constructions
“It is a wonderful discovery”, responds Leendert Louwe Kooijmans, emeritus professor of archeology at the University of Leiden, when asked. Outside the sandy soils, the bottom of the western Netherlands is probably full of all kinds of fish constructions, he says. “But they are hard to find in the clay, so that it has been uncovered is certainly special.”
Kooijmans is not surprised that fishing was done with fish defenses 4,500 years ago. “At that time, farmers lived on the sandy soils who, in addition to arable farming, also did livestock farming and fishing. It must have been taken from that.” He has no position on the speculations about the fish surpluses and what was done with them. “Those are models. They cannot be tested.”
Kooijmans does have other questions, however. Why does the construction mainly consist of birch trunks, while finds in Denmark mostly concern hazel, linden and ash? Were the peatlands of Almere then overgrown with birches? And why is the fishing weather so great? Is it one, or is it a network of fish defenses from different periods?
There is still a lot to explore, because it is a special and intriguing find, says Kooijmans:“So, Almere. Congratulations!”